Making A Molded Fuselage 

Everybody say it with me.... DUCT tape.

@MajorLeague cad is all very well but unless its linked to a five axis milling machine then you still have to be able to make the object by hand, was in the prototype business for twenty five years, 2D cad was no better than the guy with a drawing board apart from the saving in paper!, when 3D came along it was great, we could get sections wherever we wanted, and we knew there was room for the components within, then they went and spoiled everything by making 5 axis millers, saw one operating that could mill 6metres by 2metres by 30metres all with an accuracy of a quarter of a millimeter, awesome to see but that was the bulk of my work gone, time to do something else!, a 5 axis miller would have done everything he did and put all the steps and joggles in in one operation, all in less than a couple of weeks start to finish ready for paint and moulding, but not in his workshop and not at the cost, as he was doing most of the work himself, this shows that you can do this without the technology if you are prepared to work at it, in your own shed, more power to anyone prepared to have a go!.

Hey OH7, were you by any chance involved in the single layer diaphragm on the Saturn 2nd stage? I know they recruited surfers to do the fiber glass work, as nobody else had the skill level, or the patients to complete the work to the standards they needed.. no contractor would touch the job, so real perfectionist artists were needed, as you may already know.. All this worry of skills lost doesn't worry me anymore, there's a Renaissance of builders as the younger gen has melded old school knowledge and tech, with info flowing through the internet, ideas, projects, builds, are your oyster, you can learn almost any trick by contacting people instantly.. 3d printing helps too.. Still this guy is on another level, love how he kept it cheap and simple so the punter doesn't need to have tons of specialist equip to pull it off..

@MajorLeague the people with the skill/ talent to work by hand are unfortunately a dying breed, 3d cad linked to 5 axis millers cost me my core business, there will always be niche markets for a very few people but as those people become harder to find industry will change and even the automotive company's will give up on clay, as 3D and virtual reality becomes more powerful and more accepted prototypes will only be built for the motor shows, the

Industry is in a state of flux, but like everything it takes time to replace what was, I had the last of it, the previous generation had the best years, anyone still working how we did is on the dregs, I am not denigrating hand work it is something that still gives great pleasure, but today it tends to be just for me, designers are taught on the latest technology so they will use it, as I said before hand work will/ has become very niche and as an industrial model maker I have a very wide range of skills, skills the industry today has very little demand for, look at old drawing offices, lines of drawing boards with people everywhere, today all done with half a dozen on computers, the factories are mostly robotic, jobs change and some disappear, how many people do you know lead loads bodywork, the skill is all but extinct, roll on body filler!, that's life you can't fight it but you don't have to go quietly!!.

@MajorLeague that's kind of sad, computer designed aided by human!, its like the story of the factory of the future, staffed by a man and a dog, the dog is there to stop the man fiddling, and the mans job is to feed the dog. As for the phone numbers are you sure its the smart phone and not "just twenty years"☺, before my phone I had a little book, don't need that now, until the battery goes flat and then I am lost!!, keep the faith stay safe and don't go quietly.

Very sweet comment. Thank you for what you said about Mike.

I appreciate the craftsmanship here very much also, but technology is not a cheat, it's a tool like any other. It's a definition of humans to use tools.

GENIAL FELICITACONES

Burt Rutan Has some very informative videos on the manufacture method.. Naturally the Surfboard industry was probably the first mass manufacturing industry using the method.

Check out the Scrappy build by Mike Patey.

Unicorn Automotive#1 absolutely true,that plane looked spectacular,something Mr CAD and CAM from the eighties,will never Know,because he has no hand eye co-ordination,and probably no heart as he had to verbalise the skill he has in CAD.

65 hp? that's incredible. Imagine what the man would have done with a IO-550 or something.

Using extruded polystyrene foam as a core for sandwich composites is not something that should be promoted. Its shear strength is woefully inferior to proper core materials. The AR-5 was frighteningly experimental.

Ever heard of Burt Rutan? Lots of his planes used extruded polystyrene for the core...yup it has low shear strength but thick enough so it works in small planes

I agree with your comment, but with a minor correction. He says at 1:20 the engine is a 200CI Continental, which is an “O-200”. They typically produce at least 100HP, but are often modified to produce far more HP in these pylon racers. That said, the C-65 is an amazing engine - one of my favorites, and it is has an amazing performance record.

Though; high rate production moulds are made directly out of Aluminium with multiaxis milling (no need to stop at 5 axes) (The models are made with human ingenuity, even if that just means a detailed spec. and allowing machine optimisation to hit the right spot.) The human "art" comes back in when assembling the final parts to blend in all the seams and "achieve perfection" in paint.

Allow Me to attempt an explanation: Form follows function. The AR-5 was meant to be a sport plane with good performance having little horsepower. It went about as fast as the Vans RVs but with only 1/3rd the power.😮 Based on his article(s) Mike simply realized it had potential to break the newly established sub-300kg speed record, so he did. This video documents the AR-6 construction, which was purpose built for IF1 air racing, and flew many times at Reno Stead airport and several other venues. Race planes generally omit flaps. They add weight, and gaps create drag. There is no requirement for slow landing speed in air racing. The wing area is defined as no less than 66sqft. Minimum weight must be 500 empty, and a minimum pilot weight of 160lbs. This is a large wing for this weight, giving only 10lb/ft of wing loading. which is very light loading. So No need for flaps. And at the speed these aircraft race at (230-260mph) even at higher elevations, the large wing, lightly loaded, only needs about 1/2 a degree of incidence for level flight. And yes, that is a Laminar flow airfoil. You can see another view of leading edge at 21:22. It was described by Mike Arnold in a talk or article, as a "Harry Riblet" airfoil. But this is not true, although He apparently modified it for softer stalls. He was not capable of generating that specific shape, because Riblet had a distain for inverse design, based on a cursory read of his half baked book. The airfoil is in fact an NLF-0414F designed by a genius aerodynamicists named J.K. Viken and is an evolution of his early work and masters thesis. It was later studied and adopted by NASA. But this AR-6 airfoil has most or all of the camber removed and no flap. This Mod was actually performed by another aerodynamicist for John Sharp of Nemesis air racing for the DR-90. An article detailing this exact airfoil: Lednicer, David A. "Fluid Dynamic Analysis of Nemesis and Shadow" EAA Sport Aviation, August 1997. The basic NLF-0414F generates about as much lift as a standard NACA 4-digit airfoil dose WITH a flap deflected.😮 But removing the camber reduces max lift quite a bit. The NLF-0414 is Still a good airfoil without camber, because the leading edge shape was blunted to improve the stall. Loooong before Riblet ever got ahold of it to modify it. While this modified NLF airfoil or some near approximation of it has flown on the two fastest F1 race planes ever. It is actually not optimal for pylon racing. The original ordinates can be found in a hidden gem of a free download of the Eppler profil code which was modified by the late John Roncz, another aerodynamic genius beyond belief. That download is available from PDAS site if you go looking for the Eppler code there. Anyone that seeks a truly optimal airfoil for Reno, or wherever the next venue will be, needs a 100% inverse-designed foil that is fully optimized for the rigor of closed course pylon racing.

Surely the cockpit was sized to flyers or some median value (or a specific pilot or two). Canopy was probably molded from a plug. Canopies can be outsourced. Update: A description of the canopy mold is at 39:40. It's taken from the plug.

truly saddening. A great loss. He made some beautiful airplanes and some very fine videos.

Very good that you mention...he was very kewl.. I wish i had known him

Nice to hear this comment from someone in the aerospace industry. Michael would have appreciated it.